A reader sent this in today. It seems just like I’ve said many times here, that each instance of Boeing fraud and other alleged and prosecuted crimes is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. -GFS

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G. Florence-

No one is overseeing the defense contractors, they are out of control.

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The Miami Herald

Boeing pays $25 million to settle US probe

BofA agrees to $33M SEC fine over Merrill bonuses

Bank of America Corp. has agreed to pay a $33 million penalty to settle government charges that it misled investors about Merrill Lynch’s plans to pay bonuses to its executives, regulators said Monday.

In seeking approval to buy Merrill, Bank of America told investors that Merrill would not pay year-end bonuses without Bank of America’s consent. But the Securities and Exchange Commission said Bank of America had authorized New York-based Merrill to pay up to $5.8 billion in bonuses.

That rendered a statement Bank of America mailed to 283,000 shareholders of both companies about the Merrill deal “materially false and misleading,” the SEC said in a statement.

The Associated Press Posted August 13, 2009

WASHINGTON — Boeing Co. agreed Thursday to pay the U.S. government $25 million to settle claims the company did defective work on critical military refueling planes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The settlement arose out of a whistle-blower lawsuit filed in Texas by two former Boeing workers who will now receive $2.6 million for drawing attention to the issue.

The Justice Department had investigated the Chicago-based aerospace giant for allegedly defective work on the Air Force fleet of KC-10 Extenders, which are used for in-flight refueling in the Iraq and Afghanistan war theaters.

The work was done while performing maintenance on the planes at the Boeing Aerospace Support Center in San Antonio, Texas.

The government investigation found Boeing overcharged the government for installing insulation blankets by padding the estimated hours of work and charging an excessive hourly rate for labor.

In announcing the settlement, Assistant Attorney General Tony West said companies that do work for the United States “must deal honestly with the government.”

Even as it agreed to fork over millions of dollars, the company still insisted it did nothing wrong.

“Boeing disagreed with the (Justice Dept.) claims that our employees improperly installed the blankets and improperly billed the Air Force for our work,” company spokesman Forrest Gossett said. He said the company decided to settle in order to “move forward” as it continues to do maintenance work on the planes.

Under terms of the settlement, Boeing will pay $18.4 million in cash and do $6.6 million worth of repairs.

This won’t by far be the last time Boeing has to pay for retaliating against whistleblowers and bilking the government.

There are several whistleblower lawsuits in the works, just in Washington state. Most have to do with Boeing’s standard paolicy of retaliating against whistleblwers by harassing them, firing them and using every bit of their excessive power to ruin their lives.

I’ve been on the recieving end of that same retaliation for reporting fraud at Boeing that has cost lives, not just money.

“Boeing spokeswoman Deborah Vannierop…declined comment on Quintana’s lawsuit that Boeing retaliated and fired him because he reported the alleged violations. She said the company encourages employees to report wrongdoing.”

At least Boeing’s spokesperson didn’t deny that Boeing retaliated and fired him because he reported the violations. Boeing probably knows at this point no one would believe them if they denied it.

Her last sentence is true–Boeing does encourage employees to report wrongdoing, precisely so the company can identify those that would report Boeing’s fraud so they can retaliate against them.

Been there. Seen and experienced that.

If you report a coworker sleeping on the job you are safe (unless you report a managemer doing so), but report any of the numerous frauds Boeing is involved in to maximize the bottom line and you have just put a target on your back, and Boeing management will not rest untill they’ve bagged you once you are deemed such a threat to their ongoing fraudulent schemes and lawbreaking.

Not the Boeing shown in the commercials noted mby someone below, or the Boeing you would like to remember?

Get used to it. As long as the current corrupt management team remains, more of these stories will come out, and Boeing will lose more and more contracts.

Boeing knows that the piddly 2 million is no reason to change their lawbreaking ways “to enhance value.” As long as they calculate the fines are less than the money they bring into the company by committing fraud, they will continue to commit fraud.

After all, even the $615 million fine in 2006 for the tanker contracting crimes by the company and the Lockheed data theft/procurement fraud crimes by the company did not deter the company one iota from fraudulent activity, so why would a 2 million dollar fine?

Why the current management at Boeing wiill not let go of the reigns until they have driven the company into the ground by their frauds and incompetence is beyond me.

Boeing appeal on fraud claim to be heard by high court

The U.S. Supreme Court will use a case involving Boeing to clarify the rules governing lawsuits by whistle-blowers who say they have evidence of fraud against the federal government.

Separately, heeding calls from Safeco and another insurer, the high court agreed to decide whether a lower court went too far in broadening consumer rights under a federal credit-reporting law.

In the Boeing case, the company’s Rockwell unit wants to overturn a $4.2 million award won by James Stone, a retired engineer who accused Rockwell of making false statements about environmental, health and safety activities at its Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons facility outside Denver.

Boeing contends the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made it too easy to win suits under the U.S. False Claims Act, which lets whistle-blowers sue on behalf of the federal government and then share in any recovery.

The dispute centers on the requirement that whistle-blowers be the “original source” of information about wrongdoing. Boeing said in its appeal that Stone possessed only “background” information.

Also, in a case closely watched by insurers and others, the high court agreed to hear appeals from Seattle-based Safeco and Berkshire Hathaway’s Geico unit. The companies are fighting class-action suits by consumers who sought quotes, weren’t offered the lowest rates and now say they weren’t told the insurer was relying on their low credit scores.

The companies say the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made it too easy for consumers to win damages in suits against insurers, mortgage lenders and other financial-services companies. The San Francisco-based appeals court also imposed new disclosure requirements on companies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The consumers accuse the companies of violating a provision in the law that requires notification of people who are treated adversely on the basis of credit history. Companies contend that provision doesn’t apply simply because a consumer requests a quote or applies for insurance and doesn’t receive the lowest rate.

Former Boeing employee alleges fraud, wrongful termination

SEATTLE — A former Boeing Co. employee has filed a complaint against the company and his two former managers alleging they wrongfully terminated him after he pointed out what he perceived to be fraudulent practices by the company.

Joseph Scilia, an attorney who was hired as an administrative assistant for Boeing, further claims the company and the two managers – Carrie Hill and Randy Hays – violated both federal and state laws.

A Boeing spokesman said the allegations are without merit.

Scilia was hired to work in Boeing’s ethics department in 2001. In the following year, he began managing the Compliance Assessment Program which oversees the company’s compliance of ethical guidelines — a requirement Boeing must fulfill in order to be eligible to receive government contracts.

Scilia claims his eventual termination resulted from the alleged violations he discovered while monitoring the company’s compliance. In the complaint he says violations consisted of “improper and fraudulent government contract procurement practices.” He further claims Boeing was diluting its self-check system that had been established in 2003 when the company became involved in an ethics investigation and consequently suspended from eligibility to receive government contracts.

“Scilia was required, in part, to assure that Boeing complied with approximately 32 risk areas,” the complaint said. “Boeing/Hill were committing fraud with the government by making false statements to the government regarding the true health and nature of Boeing’s compliance program.”

Scilia said in 2005, he raised a red flag over new policies that he believed would result in misrepresentation of compliance, which would equate to fraud. He took his concerns to his supervisor, but his concerns were not investigated as was protocol, he said.

Boeing spokesman Chaz Bickers said Scilia’s claims are unfounded.

“Boeing has strong compliance monitoring system and effective mechanisms for reporting potential wrongdoing,” he said.

After Scilia voiced his concerns, he faced a series of retaliations which included public degradation and urgings for him to “find another position somewhere else,” according to the complaint.

Then in 2007, he said he was removed from his position when he returned from medical leave even though the leave had been approved by Boeing. He added he had not been reprimanded while on the job.

Scilia said he was ultimately given the position as an administrative assistant in the Corporate Secretary’s Office. Five months later, he was let go due to “organizational changes,” the document said. He said he filed a formal complaint with human resources, but it was never addressed.

The retaliation and discrimination on the part of Boeing and its two managers caused economic loss and emotional distress, Scilia said, and as a result, he is seeking damages.

Boeing has not filed a response in court, but Bickers said, “This suit is clearly without merit, and we will defend it accordingly.”

Scilia’s attorney, Mary Schultz, said she and Scilia, who now lives in Spokane, are fully prepared to take the case to trial. She said the complaint extends beyond Scilia and the damages he is seeking.

“A company engages in practices that are defrauding the government, to the detriment of all of us,” she said. “This is a very important claim for everyone, all of us as taxpayers.”

Editor’s note: The reporter who wrote this story is named in the lawsuits as the reporter who talked with both plaintiffs.

Another former Boeing employee has filed a federal whistle-blower complaint against the firm, charging that he was fired in retaliation for reporting ethics violations. It is the second lawsuit of its type in less than two months.

To read the rest of this story, follow the link above. Wow! Please read the Soundoff comments from PI readers too!

Before providing executives for interviews, The Boeing Co. asked the Seattle P-I to outline its questions in written form. The P-I submitted two rounds of questions, which are displayed here along with the company’s official responses.

These are the P-I’s second round of questions and Boeing’s written responses.

·Some organizations, including Standard & Poor’s, encourage full disclosure of deficiencies even though law does not require it. What factors went into Boeing management’s decision not to discuss internal control deficiencies in its filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission?

Note: those getting to this page by coming from the www.thelastinspector.com website will want to skip the following section and begin reading just after the seperation line below it if they have already read this intro to my Press Release on my website main page:

This is my first ever Press Release (just issued in a very raw form on Friday). It concerns major developments in the continuing war by Boeing executives and their hired outside counsel (both private and public) against whistleblowers like me that is shown in detail in my individual case of Boeing whistleblower retaliation–possibly the most severe case of Boeing whistleblower retaliation in the United States, if not in the entire world.

The following Press Release details both how and why my case is now threatened to be taken to the federal level by yet another U.S. Attorney of highly questionable integrity, who is only resorting to such threats in response to his extremely rich and powerful close personal friend’s request.

The noted U.S Attorney couldn’t possibly have reviewed the facts of my case before he acted to accede immediately to that improper request from someone who just happens to be the high level Perkins Coie partner that Boeing hired to guide me into prison without nary a trial, and who’s arse is still smarting, apparently, from losing the last trial Boeing and him thought they had so far in the bag, due to similarly illegal and extremely unconstitutional shenanigans, that they started to celebrate their win even before the jury had begun to deliberate on the merits of the case presented to them in court.

They had began celebrating much too early what they thought to be an impending long prison term for me, a whistleblower they saw as a serious danger to the continuance of their own fraudulent schemes and a serious threat to them personally being rightly exposed for the powerful and eminently corrupt RICO-esque group they were.

They indeed also celebrated so heartily and so far before the “gun” of that trial’s jury’s deliberations over my guilt or innocence had even been “fired” because they thought they had just Aced their own “get out of prison” cards by engaging in the heavy handed rigging of the King County “justice” system they also had unfair (and illegal) access to the “controls of” behind the scenes.

And this Press release shows that they hired this high level Perkins Coie partner quite apparently also in order to work such unethical if not illegal “magic” behind the scenes of both propriety and legality to ensure Boeing remains forever on the offensive against all whistleblowers like me–whistleblowers who, perhaps, are only now just starting out on their one way “whistleblower journeys” as hopelessly naive as I once was at that same point.

Perhaps such “beginning” whistleblowers naively fully expect their senator, representative, CEO, and/or relevant government oversight agency to act to stop the fraud they report rather than simply ignore those reports (however detailed and obviously serious is the reported fraud), just as my reports were ignored by those whose job and responsibility it was to investigate them in an unbiased manner.

Perhaps they also naively trust that Boeing’s CEO won’t arrogantly direct Boeing’s Chief Counsel to retaliate against them to stop them from further “protected” whistleblower actions if their identity as a whistleblower against Boeing fraud becomes known to Boeing’s CEO, as was unfortunately my experience in my case of whistleblowing on the deadly serious fraud I witnessed as an inspector at Boeing.

Perhaps these naive whistleblowers are just now beginning to form even the first tenuous train of thought about bringing their intimate knowledge of just a tiny part of Boeing’s vast plethora of frauds across the enterprise to the light of day for relevant action in order stop just the one fraud that they have intimate knowledge of.

If so, then the actions noted in this Press Release as performed by Boeing, Perkin’s Coie, the King County Prosecutor, and now apparently even a much, much too friendly U.S. Attorney to one of Perkin’s Coie’s chief partners that Boeing hired to ensure that this whistleblower was sent to prison by hook or by crook, are meant to not so subtlety deter such whistleblowers from coming forward and endangering Boeing’s continuing fraudulent activities, however unlikely such endangering of Boeing’s continuing fraudulent activities is in today’s changing but still extremely compromised political and agency oversight landscape.

What such potential whistleblowers incorrectly assume (as I once falsely assumed to be the case in my case of whistleblowing, as well) is that the fraud they witnessed was only committed by a few of the lowest level Boeing management layers and such fraud was therefore unknown and unsupported by every layer of Boeing management from Boeing’s CEO on down.

Nothing could be further from the truth still in today’s eminently corrupt Boeing management culture, rotten from the CEO on down, where whistleblower hunting is a blood sport enjoyed as much by these corrupt executives as their blue-blooded forefathers enjoyed the sport of fox hunting.

See the noted Press Release to see the actual email this apparently quite compromised U.S. Attorney sent off (only per his rich and powerful close personal friend’s face to face request) to threaten me with a similarly biased and unbalanced federal prosecution if I did not accede to his corrupt friends’ wishes and sign away my rights to a fair trial by a jury and/or judge in their effort to do an end run around such a jury or hypothetically unbiased King County Superior Court judge.

This is an obviously “last gasp” effort on their part in order to get me sent to prison without the “inconvenience” (to them) of a constitutionally required fair trial on the patently unfair charges against me.

All they would need to do after I was pressured by the compromised U.S. Attorney into signing their meticulously crafted to entrap me agreement would be for them to get any one of several biased King County Superior Court Judges to pronounce I had technically violated the agreement–an easy task for these people that find it absolutely normal after too many years of all too corrupting power for them to work only for corrupt Boeing management’s every whim (no matter how illegal or unethical each such “request” is on its face) and to therefore to work in opposition to the public’s interests they are statutorily and constitutionally instead supposed to be serving.

Could this be an echo of the U.S. Attorney corruption scandal of the recent past where politics, money, and power entered into the decisions and even the very appointments and terminations of U.S. Attorneys that are supposed to be above such reproach? I think it may quite well be. That U.S. Attorney corruption scandal is not yet fully investigated due to foot dragging (literally) by the executive branch of “our” government, nor, therefore, have corrective actions taken place in full or even in partiality, it seems, from this U.S. Attorneys actions as noted in my following Press Release:

In these last few months before what appears to be a landslide that will sweep corrupt politicians of the present out of power, you would think that entities that depend on those doomed politicians’ corruption in order to continue to perform their chosen frauds would be beginning to throttle back on such illegal relationships.

Not so–at least not so in the case of Boeing’s continuing reliance on the ongoing corruption of our elected and appointed government officials to continue to allow them to engage in their frauds of choice.

Boeing is arrogantly even now “putting the pedal to the metal,” not only on the frauds they continue to commit (as they know there is still no politician or government entity uncorrupted enough not to just continue to look the other way), but also in their connected attempts to retaliate against any whistleblower like me (who they were unable to intimidate into keeping quiet and to look the other way on perhaps the most deadly serious and systemic fraudulent act that Boeing is involved in at the moment–the Boeing Quality Assurance management fraud as noted on my website, www.thelastinspector.com, that makes Boeing’s Production Certificate and related certifications and FAA delegations such as Boeing’s ODA delegation and each individual airplane’s Airworthiness Certificate, effectively worthless pieces of scrap paper).

Arrogantly bold and baseless threats and illegal punitive actions against even the most obvious of protected messengers–whistleblowers like me–are the course of action chosen by corrupt Boeing management even to this very day.

These are actions taken by Boeing against whistleblowers like me who are/were naive enough to try to end those Boeing frauds themselves in the political and agency climate of the past several years that was so conducive to abetting such corporate fraud, however serious and deadly it was.

I learned this continuing effort by Boeing and its outside counsel at whistleblower retaliation was being kicked up to a whole new level as of last Thursday, when my attorney sent me the following email concerning my continuing legal persecution by Boeing’s King County Prosecutor’s Office, and we later discussed it:

This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity to which it is emailed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable laws. If the reader of this communication is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribuiton or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by phone or email. Thank you.

I just got a call from Carl Blackstone, US Attorney’s Office, who asked about Eastman’s case. He said they may be interested in prosecuting him federally if he won’t resolve the case here. He said you could call him to discuss, 206-553-2905.

Scott

(End of email)

Interesting, huh?

Needless to say this new threat against me in the long and continuing saga of Boeing’s illegal retributions against me for my ground breaking whistleblowing against Boeing’s both illegal and unethical conduct in the Boeing/FAA fraud as noted on my website, www.thelastinspector.com, piqued my interest, to say the least.

But what I learned outside this email later was several times more shocking.

But first, to understand events, you must be brought up to date on what has happened since the King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, Boeing, and one of Perkins Coie’s most powerful partners failed to secure what they thought would be a walk in the park style conviction against me in April, when my trial on 16 felony counts of first degree “computer trespass” ended in a 10-2 mistrial that began as a 9-3 mistrial early in the jury’s deliberations.

Even before those deliberations had begun, the gleeful “embrace” (which was a female version of the “male” high five, I suspect) by Vanessa Lee (Boeing Legal’s attorney who sat in the courtroom next to Perkins Coie’s partner Marc Boman through the trial while she desperately tried to help ensure my conviction by any means possible from that back court bench) of Scott Peterson, King County Senior Prosecuting Attorney, just after Peterson’s closing statement to the jury in that trial, was the beginning of the “celebrating before the game was up” that I noted in the introduction to this press release.

Incidentally, during the trial, Boeing and their bought and literally paid for King County Prosecutor’s office had pulled out every stop in order to prevent me from even being considered a whistleblower, or my whistleblowing activities and whistleblower laws from even being considered during the trial by the jury. The jury themselves thought this was wrong, as they sent a question from the jury room to the judge asking whether they could consider such whistleblower protection laws during the deliberations.

After the disappointment and inconvenience of the jury’s mistrial, instead of the pre-rigged win Boeing thought they had ensured by the unfair trial they “guided” by spending vast sums of money on Perkins Coie’s best available counsel (partner Marc Boman) before and during the trial, Boeing was not as happy and giddy as they were before their expensive inside and outside counsel had remembered (apparently only after the announcement by the jury that deliberations were deadlocked) that I had to be pronounced guilty by the jury before they actually had me in prison with that trial’s very friendly County Superior Court Judge to both Boeing and the prosecution’s every whim.

A short time later, the King County Prosecutor put forth an “offer” for me to plead guilty to lesser charges of 2nd degree criminal trespass, the same kind of trespass someone would be charged with if a prosecutor wanted to prosecute someone for stepping on somebody’s lawn, in order for me to avoid the added insult of a threatened second and similarly unfair trial.

I refused that “deal.” It was clear that Boeing badly wanted me to accept one of these “offers,” which were obviously not in my best interests, as I had done nothing wrong other than “the crime” of being too naive in thinking that some politician, government agency official, and/or Boeing Board of Directors member would do something to end Boeing’s fraud that placed (and still places) untold lives at much extra risk in order to maximize the bottom line. I certainly thought one of those numerous powerful people I contacted before my arrest would at least grow a spine and do something to make things right for the public’s sake well before I would find myself thrown to the wolves that are corrupt Boeing management and those that they hold the reigns of in “public” office for the whistleblower retaliation that was the trial I was put through per Boeing’s “requests” and for the current King County Prosecutor’s Boeing and Perkins Coie donations to his campaign.

But before the prosecutor set the case for the second trial, my attorney decided to negotiate a “continuance for dismissal” with the King County Prosecutor’s office.

My attorney and the prosecutor Scott Peterson have been negotiating such an agreement since then, at least up to Thursday’s throwing of a monkey wrench into the deal by Marc Boman’s calling for the favor of a federal prosecution of me from his close friend, U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone, before the case setting hearing Thursday that my attorney and I attended at the King County Courthouse.

Read the last draft of the “continuance for dismissal” my attorney and the King County Prosecutor were working on before Marc Boman (Perkins Coie) and Boeing killed any chance of such an agreement with Thursday’s shenanigans to try to threaten and intimidate me into taking the agreement just as they had rewritten it by threats of a federal prosecution by a buddy of theirs in the U.S. Attorney’s office if I did not accede and sign it, at the following link (under construction):

Link (in work).

In a nutshell, the continuance for dismissal would have brought the lesser charges of 2nd degree criminal trespass against me and leave them hanging over my head until January, 2008, upon which all charges against me would be dropped, if I kept to the terms of the agreement.

Those terms were to sit down to an interview with Boeing where I would answer all questions, keep the contents of that interview confidential, keep the exact method (already public) I used to remove the files from Boeing for my whistleblowing activities a secret, show them exactly where the files were on my seized computer that I had given to the Seattle Times, and my attorney making a good faith effort to retrieve those same files from The Seattle Times.

In the agreement they are trying so desperately to coerce me into signing, however, there was a trap—-the central and only part of the agreement that I strongly believe Boeing, Perkins Coie, and the King County Prosecutor actually wanted. That clause stated that I, by signing the agreement, gave up the right to a jury trial or trial before a judge on the charges against me if they determined I had violated the agreement. One of the stipulations that would be a violation is if I “committed another crime” during the term of the agreement.

If they later got any one of numerous “friendly” King County Superior Court Judges to determine that I had violated the agreement in any way, then that judge would simply read the “facts” of the case as written in a “Stipulation of Facts” of the case agreed to by my attorney and the prosecutor’s office and then immediately decide if I was guilty or innocent of the charges. Upon a guilty decision by the judge, I would go straight to jail or prison for the term decided by the judge.

It is my strong belief that their only interest in this “continuance for dismissal” was for that clause in which I would give up my right to a trial if I “violated” the agreement.

Boeing, Marc Boman of Perkins Coie, and their similarly corrupt puppets in the King County Prosecutor’s office, wanted simply to get me to sign the agreement so that they could then find a way to claim that I had violated the agreement, at which point they would get the case before a friendly judge in King County Superior Court.

In so doing, they would have thusly steered around what they saw as an insurmountable problem hereto now. They knew that no jury would convict me as there would always be several people on the jury that actually deliberated the trial on the facts my attorney and I put forth at trial rather than just the mistruths that Boeing, Perkins Coie’s attorney, and the prosecutor had made up and/or had allowed to be put forth to the jury and judge.

Too bad I saw through their plot. In fact, I believe that Boeing had Marc Boman talk his close personal friend, U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone, in order to ask Blackstone to make the threat of a federal prosecution if I didn’t fall into that trap easily on my own, which made the agreement all the more unreasonably a risk for me to sign.

Then, interestingly, before I left for court yesterday (and before I ultimately found out that it was Marc Boman, Boeing’s outside counsel and Perkins Coie partner, that had called on his own personal friend, U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone, to threaten me with federal charges if I did not take the noted entrapment deal) I thought a bit more about the prospect of such federal charges and sent the following email both to my attorney and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg’s office to ensure that she shared the full message with their office:

I just thought of something important “Federal Jeopardy” I see could be a good thing. Boeing is not popular in Federal Court. If my case is brought before a prosecutor that is not bought and paid for literally like Satterberg and Peterson are, it may well be Boeing that ends up being prosecuted, and not me. As Boeing’s GSA expires sometime in August, it would only take one charge of a high ranking official at Boeing to get the whole GSA invalidated, and Boeing prosecuted as the criminal entity they are (and narrowly avoided culpability for with that GSA). They are also up on all of the numerous Federal whistleblower protection laws, and so, if Peterson forces it into that realm because he is being unreasonable and I think not treating you with the respect and credibility you deserve by trying to use such thinly veiled threats to force your hand, even if you or Peterson don’t believe I am a whistleblower, I think I can show them I am, and show both Peterson, Satterberg, and Boeing were retaliating against me illegally (with the email they sent to themselves on 4/12/06 and everything they did to me before and after it. So, it could come out that if Mr. Blackstone is not in Boeing’s or Satterberg’s pocket securely enough that Mr. Satterbeg, Mr. Peterson, and Boeing may end up being the one’s prosecuted. I suggest strongly you have Mr. Peterson take these facts into account and clear his actions in this regard with Boeing before he places both himself and Boeing at significant Federal jeopardy themselves. Certainly, if Peterson or Satterberg feel they could do no federal time for their actions in following a corrupt corporations every illegal whim against me, then they still owe it to Boeing to advise them of the risk he would be placing them in (criminal charges filed against them as a corporation and any of numerous Boeing executives involved in the original fraud Mr. Satterberg never took an interest in even looking into himself, much less prosecuting, and the retaliation lodged against me by Boeing for trying to bring their Southwest Airlines/FAA-like fraud on steroids to an end) by breaking the GSA) by thusly “taking it up a notch.” Because I still care about Boeing’s employees (not its largely and provably corrupt management), please have Mr. Satterberg or Peterson get word from Boeing that they want to “take it up a notch” thusly. If they do want to force it to Federal court, I may finally be allowed a real hearing, absent all of the withholding of evidence and bias by King County Superior Court of the past.

Thanks,

Gerry

(End of email)

I do not wish to repeat all of the points I made in the email again here, so I will let you take from the email what statements within it are of interest to you.

However shocking the news was I later learned, that Boeing and Perkins Coie’s Marc Boman had used Boman’s personal friendship with a U.S. Attorney to communicate threats–threats he wouldn’t have obviously have made absent his close friend’s urgent request. And these were threats he made while absent the facts of the case, as U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone couldn’t possibly have had full access to those facts at the time he decided to act exactly per his close friend Marc Boman’s overtures and improper requests.

I believe it is quite common knowledge that the U.S. Attorneys have been politicized under this administration for Republican and special interests–as in their penchant for being biased for giving even demonstrably corrupt corporations like Boeing whatever they want, no matter how corrupt their wants are. One only has to stay reasonably informed by reading the news to understand that.

Could this pressuring of U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone by his own personal friend for his friend’s client, Boeing, be yet another of numerous such illegal if not highly unethical acts?

Was it an act based not on the merits of the case, but instead only on who knows who, who has the most money, who is perceived to have the most power, who is Republican and who is not, and/or who is a corporation and who is just a common citizen trying to stand up to and end corporate corruption?

Of course.

It almost assuredly is thusly unethical if not illegal.

Everyone knows that power corrupts, and the longer that someone has unbridled power, as in Boeing’s case, the more corrupt they seem to become. Let’s just say that U.S. Attorneys, Boeing, the current King County Prosecutor, and even a Perkins Coie attorney, apparently, have much too much power, for far too long.

Well, that is it for now. I will be adding to this News Release constantly, so check back often, especially if you are a reporter or editor.

I do think this is newsworthy. I hope you decide it is as well.

I think that the public has the right to know just why such back alley deals, as occurred in my case between Boeing’s hired counsel, Marc Boman, and an apparently ethically and/or legally challenged U.S. Attorney, Carl H. Blackstone, are made (based on powerful and not so moneyed friends helping powerful and moneyed friends in the personal interests of friendship, abuse of power, and quite possibly even the transfer of money and/or power from the moneyed friend to the not so moneyed friend at a present or future date, rather than the actual consideration of merits or lack or merit of the case imposed on one friend from another) and therefore serve the opposite of justice.

The public also needs to know that corrupt and arrogant corporations like Boeing will not relinquish such corruption or arrogance even if their corrupted friends in government will be swept from power in just a few months.

Contact me as noted above if you wish to cover these latest important twists in this important case for every other of numerous other potential whistleblowers at just Boeing itself, not to mention those at other corporations that similarly resort to try to “kill the messenger” when that messenger attempts to communicate their frauds to the relevant organization in order to have them stopped before consequences occur, like more people and troops dying because of such fraudulent activities, as are the consequences for the fraud continuing that I tried to stop as noted on my website.

Of course, I will take the actions outlined in my email and attempt to rightly have Boeing and certain officials in the King County Prosecutor’s office prosecuted for their corruption if my case is moved to the federal arena (or even if not at this point).

Any possibility that there was for the agreement noted above being signed by me has been killed by Marc Boman’s possibly illegal and certainly unethical actions on the behalf of Boeing, as well as my knowledge of the likely intentions of the true criminals involved in this matter–both Boeing and the King County prosecutors from Dan Satterberg on down in the hierarchy there.

My goal would be to have the Boeing GSA (the Boeing Global Settlement Agreement for the Boeing CFO/Druyun tanker fraud and the Lockheed competition sensitive data theft by Boeing which was then used by Boeing to rig and win the EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) contract competition) entered into in August 2006 invalidated by such rightful (based on the facts, and not just friendships) charges against the corrupt Boeing executives involved in covering up the fraud I attempted to bring to light by falsely testifying against me and colluding with a similarly corrupt King County Prosecutor in order to ensure that I (the “protected” whistleblower) was the one confined to prison before I saw to it that they and other Boeing management were rightly sent there by a fair and “facts and data” based prosecution for their fraud in which they intentionally placed the public at much greater risk by ignoring the laws and regulations meant to protect the public’s very lives simply in order to maximize the bottom line.

Federal prosecutors may actually interview me and check into Boeing’s corruption as documented on my site and in letters to Congress and federal agencies before they decide who it is that committed the actual wrongdoing in this matter that merits prosecution. That was something the King County Prosecutor’s office never did or even considered doing as they were so beholden to the unbridled power and money that is Boeing for their own personal interests, and they therefore intentionally hid behind a similarly biased Seattle Police Department’s “investigation” into this matter that also intentionally only focused where corrupt Boeing management wanted them to look, and came to the conclusions that Boeing management wanted them to make.

The Last Inspector, Gerald Eastman speaks of his experiences as a Boeing Whistleblower, discusses why others have not also done the same and challenges those who should be whistleblowers to blow that whistle. (www.thelastinspector.com)
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Why are Boeing Employees Cowardly?
Thursday, June 5, 2008, 05:40 AM
Posted by Administrator
I recently wondered why such a person as me was thrust into this position–Why was I the only one “brave” enough at Boeing to turn the massive fraud accros the Boeing enterprise in Quality Assurance Management into the FAA?

Why?–I was by no means the best person for that job. Someone that had more drive to act with the requisite urgency in order to save the lives that are obviously placed in jeopardy by Boeing’s systemic frauds against the public and taxpayer would have been much better than me.

Someone not so trusting and naive who could have therefor plotted a better course through the corruption in the overisght agencies whose only job is to stop companies like Boeing from committing this RICO-like “working togther with similarly corrupt agencies” fraud would have been much better in the scheme of things.

Someone who was more photogenic and perhaps actually enjoyed being on the news rather than cringing at the thought would perhaps had been better than me–certainly someone who had less resemblance than I do to the character “Hurley” on the TV show “Lost” would have been a better spokesman for the public and miltary personnel that Boeing and the FAA were placing at greater risks for more personal financial gain than they would have gotten otherwise.

I had heard many employees over the years say that they were thinking about going to the FAA, just as I ultimately also believed I had to do for the safety of those on Boeing airplanes.

They saw the same fraud as I did–the corrupt QA managers at Boeing who worked every day to destroy the Boeing quality system as opposed to what their true jobs were supposed to be. They were corrupt QA managers that were statutorily supposed to be firewalled off from the corrupting influences of other company departments who worshipped at the altar of Cost and Schedule only–Quality and Safety be damned.

However, the almost wholly corrupt QA management at Boeing saw that the corruption in other Boeing management made it a much better career decision for them to grovel even lower than Manufacturing and Engineering management did and “worship” solely the same two “gods”–Cost and Schedule–that other Boeing managers did, even though they knew their true regulatorily required jobs were to protect Quality and Safety only, and to protect those two critical items for the sake of public and military lives at all costs, as the much less corrupt FAA of old had seen that such groveling of Quality personnel before other company production departments ultimately led to deadly crashes.

Still, knowing the criticality of their uniquely important jobs being independent of other departments that historically tried to save money by ignoring every requirement possible–even obviously critical quality and safety ensuring processes, corrupt QA management at Boeing did as directed and surrendered their required independence from historically non-quality and non-safety driven departments in totality.

They actually defiled their jobs by taking orders from, and carrying out the solely Cost and Schedule driven goals of Manufacturing as their own goals.

In so doing, they became the same shills they ensured the inspectors who reported to them were or were made to become–merely pretending to do their jobs for a week every two years around FAA ACSEP audit time (and, as one of my corrupt QA supervisors told us, “the FAA ASIs don’t look very deep, so no one had to even do a good job of pretending to do their jobs to pass such ACSEP audits easily), with the rest of their time spent taking orders from Manufacturing managers of their same level who they were supposed to independently ensure the quality, safety, and reliability requirements of their department’s work. Illegal, but surely a conflict of interest, to say the least.

Instead, they became enablers of both Manufacturing and QA fraud across the enterprise. After all, per their sick way of thinking, ensuring Boeing aircraft had the required minimum levels of quality, safety, and reliability was totally “non-value added” to Boeing’s bottom line–So what if massive amounts of defects the customers might never notice were delivered with each Boeing airplane to their mostly unsuspecting customers? Defrauding the passengers, crew, and our military personnel out of their safety was a no brainer to these types of criminals.

Even if a crash occured because of their intentional fraud, not even the most expert CSI or NTSB peronnel in the world could make sense of the cause of the crash because the resulting small pieces of people and debris that resulted automatically would cover up the crime. Boeing could then put their “value-added” P.R. machine into action and immediately start blaming the dead pilots of the doomed aircraft as occurred in the two 737 rudder hardover accidents that killed all on board. It was with great reluctance that Boeing gave up blaming the dead pilots and admitted that it might have been the rudder hydraulic actuator system at fault in those tragic crashes.

Such is the way the fraudulent QMS system intentionally doesn’t work at Boeing. They have brainwashed themselves and some of the lesser minded in the public that anything required by law they don’t do behind the closed doors of BCA factories that doesn’t result in airplanes or pieces of airplanes constantly falling from the sky like rain onto the public means the FAA-approved Quality System they are required by law to follw is truly “non-value added,” and they are therefore right to ignore it and simply go through the motions of pretending to comply with it–Never mind that no airplane can be delivered by a company until they have a quality system that supposedly complies with the FAA approved quality system and they are granted a Production Certificate by the FAA.

Of cousre, with the FAA manangement overlooking this fraud ongoing on Boeing production lines being several orders of magnitude more corrupt that the FAA management fingered in the fraud exposed between Southwest Airlines and the FAA, it is no wonder Boeing’s Production Certificate has no more value than any generic sheet of paper used to construct an airplane for a paper airplane contest.

The corrupt FAA management still in place in the Transport Airplane Directorate–which Nick Sabatini at FAA Headquarters protects by looking the other way from all of the still ongoing fraud within that part of the agency–has yet to be “Stuckeyed,” or brought to justice for intentionally placing the lives of the public and military at much greater risk by acceding to overlooking the fraud of what they consider as their only real customer–corrupt Boeing management, who in many cases are their dreamed for future employer for services they rendered over the years unto those corrupt managers at Boeing before their FAA retirements after a short twenty year stints at the agency, whereafter they can get hired by Boeing or one of numerous industry associations Boeing is the main contributor to at multiples of the salary and benefits then didn’t earn while at the FAA.
Hopefully the fraud still ongoing between Boeing and FAA management placing the public and military at risk will receive the same or more attention soon that the Southwest Airlines/FAA debacle did both in the press and in Congress.

I know that people involved in this fraud do want to come forward to the appropriate authorities and report the fraud of their management. However, thinly veiled retaliation like Boeing and the officials they ensured were elected committed against me has given them pause, which is the real reason I am being attacked so overzealously for something other employees at Boeing were only given a few days off for.

They also are afraid of retaliation like the two Southwest Airlines FAA whistleblowers experienced, and are looking to see if they are retaliated against again for going before Congress and doing the right thing. Hopefully those whistleblowers will escape further retaliation because they went before Congress and that will encourage those who want to come forward and tell what they know about the ongoing fraudulent relationship between Boeing and the FAA to do so.

Yes, Boeing and FAA employees are cowardly, especially after what they’ve seen happen to me and other coworkers who even thought about coming forward or made the severe mistake of contacting the “ethics” department at Boeing about such fraud they witnessed and therefore just stuck a target on their forhead just as I unwittingly did.

But who could blame them? They have families and mortgages. The good pay at Boeing serves as a deterrent to those who want to come forward because they know their job and the pay and benefits they worked so long and hard for will be in jeopardy if they do so.

I had no illusions when I decided to be the first one to ever go to the FAA about the corrupt Boeing QA management I witnessed over the years. I knew at that point my job was most likely history. And that was years before my “infamous” collection of information for my report on Boeing and FAA management fraud for the DOT OIG. I never feared for my life, but my job was another manner. That was the way the the corrupt “Boeing mafia” would try to terminate me, no matter under what manufactured pretenses or however much time or resources they had to expend to ensure my termination and even imprisonment to make me the poster child of what happens to a whistleblower at Boeing that dares expose their RICO-like relationship with FAA management.

I did decide to do the right thing and come forward years before today when Congress looking the other way on this fraud that has been reported to them in the past finally starting to pay attention to the criminal collusion between FAA management and industry management via hearing in Congress and related FBI investigations. Today is the time when those who have kept silent about all of the fraud around them should come forward at long last. We certainly do not wnat to wait to act until we have to dodge parts of planes and body parts when we go outside which is the level at which so many corrupted people think is the only point at which this kind of fraud could be considered a problem.

Although I was a pioneer in the field of whistleblowing on the fraudulent realtionships between industry and FAA management, I by no means want to be the only one to ever have enough courage to come forward. Indeed, in today’s climate, many of the dangers I experienced do not exist. After participating in a Southwest airlines/FAA style hearing before Congress, even Boeing is not arrogant enough to screw with you like they screwed with me years before my arrest as retaliation for my going to the FAA and also actually inspecting the jet engines, engine pylons, wing stub to body join, body structures, flight control systems, jet fuel samples, hydraulic fluid samples, etc., that I was assigned to only pretend to inspect over the years.

Yes, there are ample “close to home” reasons to be cowardly and not come forward as you know you should do. The Southwest Airlines FAA ASIs and I have broken the ground for you. There is, however, only one reason to come forward and tell what you know about FAA/Boeing management fraud to Congress and/or the FBI–because you know deep down it is the right thing to do. The public and our military have the right to not have their lives placed intentionally at much greater risk by the fraud both you and I have witnessed over the years.

If you are like past conciencious Boeing employees, you may have kept a journal of incidents and fraudulent actions your management has told you to do or have done themselves to protect yourself in case that particular plane crashed because of that fraud. If you do decide to come forward, such data would be useful to the authorities, I’m sure.

It is long past time for the corrupt management of Boeing and the FAA to committ their daily frauds and go home to soundly sleep and dream of the rewards they hope they’ll reap one day for their frauds that may reap many lives. It is time for them to start to toss and turn at night. They won’t do so because they intentionally placed the public and our military in danger for some imagined benefit to them and the company’s bottom line. They are pathologically incapable of enough compassion to even start to care about the effect of their crimes. However, being the purely selfish creatures they are, they will toss and turn once you and others come forward and they are ultimately “Stuckeyed” to a prison bed for their golden years.

The time of cowardice has ended. There is no better time to be brave and stand up against the criminal management you work for that has made both Boeing quality assurance and Boeing’s Production Certificate a farce.

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GFS

This blog is about whistleblowers and the conditions and situations that happen in their lives to create their whistleblower status. This blog is intended to inform, share, and support whistleblowers and those who support them.